The Broad Museum by Diller Scofidio + Renfro is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum is home to the nearly 2,000 works of art in The Broad Art Foundation and the Broads’ personal collections, which are among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide.
Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” the museum’s design merges the two key programs of the building: public exhibition space and the storage that will support The Broad Art Foundation’s extensive lending activities.
Rather than relegate the storage to secondary status, “the vault” plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Its heavy opaque mass is always in view, hovering midway in the building. Its carved underside shapes the lobby below and public circulation routes. Its top surface is the floor of the third floor galleries.
The vault is enveloped by the “veil,” a porous, honeycomb-like, exterior structure that spans across the block-long building and provides filtered natural daylight. The museum’s “veil” lifts at the corners, welcoming visitors into an active lobby.
The public is then drawn upwards via escalator, tunneling through the vault, arriving onto nearly an acre of column-free gallery space bathed in diffuse light. The gallery has 23- foot-high ceilings, and the roof is supported by 7-foot-deep steel girders. Departure from the third floor gallery space is a return trip through the vault via a winding central stair that offers glimpses into the vast holdings of the collection.
Images courtesy of Bruce Damonte, Iwan Baan, Hufton + Crow, Benny Chan
Discover: www.dsrny.com
